CHAPTER 14

Eight days to due date

Saturday, January 14, brings more rain and dark-gray skies. I spend the morning taking a hot bath and resting. At lunchtime I eat a piece of toast in the kitchen. Dicken sits with me, reading a magazine.

“Look at this,” he says, showing me one of the magazine’s glossy pages. It’s a photograph of a boy with a badly deformed mouth.

“It’s an ad for a charity that does cleft surgeries in third world countries. They do each operation for two hundred and fifty dollars.”

I don’t want to hear about birth defects; it’s too close to home right now. But I am reluctant to admit that, afraid Dicken will think I’m being melodramatic. I look down at my plate, hoping he’ll change the subject.

“Isn’t it crazy?” he goes on. “The surgery is that cheap and a boy his age hasn’t had it. He must be, what, eight or nine years old?”

I grunt.

“Hey, what’s the name of that actor in the movie we rented the other night, the one who has a scar on his lip?”

“I don’t know,” I say quickly. “Can we talk about something else?”

* * *

We watch the Redskins lose their playoff game in the afternoon. During the game, I notice less movement in the baby and try to ignore it. But by nightfall I am worried and mention it to Dicken.

“Eat something,” he suggests. “The baby’s probably just low on energy.”

I eat a bunch of carob chips, hoping the sugar will have an effect, but nothing changes. My mouth tastes sour and metallic.

At around nine o’clock, I ask Dicken to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. The fetoscope feels cold on my belly.

“It’s a little bit higher than it’s been.”

I start to get panicky. Dicken calls Rhione, who suggests we think about going to the hospital to have a tracing. They’ll induce me, I’m sure, I think, feeling my fear of getting caught in the medical system. But my anxiety about the baby is stronger.

We decide to go in.

We tell Mom our plan, and she jumps into action. “Don’t worry, I’ll put the boys to bed. Call us when you know something.”

I say goodbye to the boys, wondering if the next time I see them will be their introduction to the baby. As we buckle our seatbelts, Dicken tells me Rhione and the other midwives are on their way and will meet us at the hospital.

“I’d hate to be a midwife,” Dicken says.

I nod, noticing the cold, dark evening, feeling guilty that the midwives have to drive an hour for what might turn out to be a false alarm.

The rest of the short drive to Ashland Hospital, Dicken and I are quiet. I think about the surly ultrasound technician from the hospital in Grants Pass and pray for a gentle, friendly practitioner.

* * *

We park and head into the emergency room, where a man on duty interviews us, then sends us to the birthing ward, a short walk down the hall. We see hardly anyone. The hospital corridors are bright with fluorescent lights but feel deserted.

The birth center is empty except for Sage, the young nurse at the desk. She gives us a warm smile, telling us, “You’re the only ones here so far tonight. It’s unusually quiet.” She looks nervous when I explain that the baby has slowed down, and quickly settles me into a bed and hooks me up to a fetal monitor.

“Ah, a steady heartbeat,” she says, smiling. “That’s a relief. I’ll go get in touch with the doctor who’s on call.”

Meanwhile, the three midwives arrive. Karen tells me a song came to her while she was driving to the hospital, and she begins to sing quietly, “Don’t worry about a thing, ’cause every little thing is gonna be alright.” It’s the Bob Marley song Kevin asked Maud to play for him the day before, when he reported hearing voices talking to him about the baby.

Dr. Moreno, the on-call obstetrician, arrives and looks at the tracing. She frowns and asks Sage, “Is that the baby’s heartbeat or hers?”

There is an anxious discussion about the slow heartbeat the machine is reporting, but no one can tell if it’s mine or the baby’s. Dr. Moreno decides to do an ultrasound. After a few minutes of looking at the screen, she tells us the baby appears to be in distress. She also mentions the small size, her expression grim as she says, “Looks like fetal growth retardation.”

She recommends a C-section, then leaves the room so we can decide.

Rhione expresses some puzzlement at the doctor’s urgency, wondering why she wouldn’t suggest trying to induce labor first. I am shaking hard, and know what I want to do.

“Let’s go with the C-section. I can’t take any more of this not knowing.” I look at the clock. It is eleven thirty. I figure the baby will be born after midnight, making its birthday January 15. Martin Luther King’s birthday.

The doctor nods when we tell her our decision, and one of the nurses describes what will happen in the rush to get me to surgery. The next ten minutes are spent in a flurry of activity—a nurse hooking me up to an IV, beginning to administer antibiotics and fluids. Someone asking me about my last meal. “I ate about two hours ago. A whole bunch of carob chips. I was trying to get the baby to be more active.”

A very pregnant woman comes in. “I’m Jennifer Theone, the family doctor. I’ll be in charge of the baby when it’s born.” She looks at the chart, then says to me, “I’ve seen lots of small babies, and there’s never been a problem. So don’t worry too much.”

Relief floods me for a moment. Everything’s going to be fine. Let’s just get this baby out. Meanwhile, my whole body is shaking.

Someone explains that I will get a low, horizontal incision, “so you can wear a bikini.” I can hardly comprehend the words, they seem so irrelevant. I nod automatically, thinking, Why in the world would anyone mention a bathing suit at a time like this? How could it ever matter what I look like again?

The anesthesiologist enters, wearing street clothes. She smiles at me. “I wanted to introduce myself before the surgery,” she says. “I’m Kathy.” I notice her chic coat, her New York accent. She describes the process I will go through shortly. She calls me “honey,” and I like her warmth.

“How many people can go into the OR with her?” Dicken asks.

“Just one.”

I look at Dicken and he nods. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right there with you.”

My clothes are removed and I’m put in a papery gown and cap. The nurse tells me to take off my jewelry, so Dicken unclasps my necklace and then struggles to wrest my engagement and wedding bands from my swollen ring finger.

“I can’t get these off,” he says, a little breathless.

“Don’t worry about the rings,” the nurse says.

Somehow I am lifted onto a gurney and wheeled into the hall. Dicken tells me he’ll get his scrubs on and meet me in the operating room. “I’m going to give your mum a call and let her know what’s happening,” he adds.

“You’re going to be holding your baby soon,” someone says to me as I am being wheeled down to the operating room.

“Remember to use your hypnobirthing!” one of the midwives calls after me.

I keep taking long, deep breaths as best I can.

“I’m Jani, the assisting physician,” a young woman says, smiling warmly. “You look familiar to me.”

I don’t recognize her but I nod my head.

“Do you have a child at Willow Wind?”

“Yes,” I say. “My son Jasper goes there.”

“So does my son,” she says.

I smile. I like that so far, the growing team of four doctors and at least as many nurses are all women.

The anesthesiologist, now in her scrubs, greets me again and tells me how to sit on the edge of the table with my back hunched over so she can get a big needle in my spine.

I try to hold myself steady yet I’m still shaking all over. I feel the needle go in but don’t flinch or make a sound. I just want this over.

“You’re doing so great, sweetheart! I hope it’s not hurting you.”

“I don’t care about any pain,” I struggle to say through my chattering teeth. “I just want the baby to be okay.”

They have me lie back on the table as my legs and abdomen go numb. Dr. Moreno keeps testing me by poking different places with a sharp tool. One or two of the nurses are constructing a paper tent around me to keep me from seeing the surgery. Dicken is by me with his blue cap on. He takes one of my hands in his. I can hear the doctors getting ready to open me up.

“Well, we’ve brought children into our lives in three different ways,” Dicken tells me. “A home birth, an adoption, and now a C-section.”

For some reason this makes me smile, and I relax a little. “Keep talking to me,” I tell him.

He does, but then a minute later I feel the pulling sensation as the baby is delivered, and we are both quiet, listening for news, waiting for the outcome.

There is no sound for a while. No baby’s cry. Then someone calls out, “We need to get a pediatrician here, right away!”

My heart falls. My upper body begins to shake more violently.

The next hour or so is a blur: “Your baby has an extra finger.” “She’s pink.”

“You mean it’s a girl?” I ask, seeing a future with a daughter.

“Oh, I don’t know why I said ‘she.’ It just came out. I didn’t look to see what gender it is.”

I’m hearing someone say “he.” Dicken telling me it’s a boy. Me telling Dicken to go over and find out what’s happening. “Does he look normal? Is he Down’s?”

“He’s really small.”

Mom appears in a blue surgical cap and coverall. Lots of activity. Faces look serious. No one congratulating me, no one telling me what’s happening. Being wheeled into the recovery room. As I leave the operating room, I don’t want to look but I do. There’s my baby, on the table with an oxygen mask over his face and lots of people leaning over him. The sight of him washes over me, a tug of tenderness, a relaxing, Oh, he’s adorable. A yearning to hold him, to get this awful period of separation over.

In the recovery room with Mom, I have no concern for my own physical well-being. I hardly notice the nurse taking my vitals, checking my monitors. The fact that I’ve just undergone the first major surgery of my life couldn’t matter less. My attention is on the state of the baby, the vast gulf between me and him, and my not knowing what is going on. I am shaking again, my teeth chattering as if I’m freezing cold, but I don’t feel a thing physically.

Dicken comes in, his face serious. “Some of his intestines are in his umbilical cord. And he has a cleft palate.”

I imagine a deformed baby. Suddenly I don’t want him anymore. I tell myself I don’t have it in me to mother a less-than-perfect baby. I’d rather have him die. I wish with all my heart I could go back to April and undo the pregnancy. I kick myself for taking this path. It feels like a complete nightmare. One I can’t cope with. One that will ruin my life, Dicken’s life. Why can’t I ever be happy with what I have? I feel like the dog that goes for the extra bone in the water’s reflection and loses the only one he has.

“Can they fix his problems?” I ask.

“Yes, they can do surgery for the palate and the intestines. They’re talking about transferring him to Rogue Valley—there’s a neonatal unit there.”

I think of the magazine ad Dicken showed me earlier today, with the boy and his deformed mouth. My baby will have the surgery, he’ll be fixed. Then I imagine the parents of children who don’t have the security I do, and I feel overwhelmed with sorrow so intense I’m not sure I can withstand it. It is grief for mothers everywhere, and grief for me and my own child, for what is happening in this hospital right now.

Dicken leaves again. My mother is trying to reassure me. I hardly hear her. I’m drowning in thoughts of surgery, separation, drugs pumping into my baby’s pristine body, tender newborn skin scarred by scalpels, untold psychological trauma. I wonder if he’ll ever be able to breast-feed.

My mother leaves and comes back. She mentions something about the baby’s skull, possible brain damage. I feel another layer of reality drop away. I’m spinning in a terrifying vortex.

Dicken returns and tells us of a plan to helicopter the baby to Portland for surgery.

“Can you go with him?” I ask.

“I think so. Yes, of course I will.”

He leaves again.

I feel desperate and helpless. I ask my mother, “What’s going to happen next?”

“We don’t know. We’re in the mysterium tremendum.”

I’m wheeled into the hospital room. I see the three midwives’ faces, their massive concern. Karen puts her hands together in a prayerful gesture and bows at my feet. Rhione says, “Cinda, I honor you.” Everything feels so fast, I can’t catch my breath. I’m still shaking.

I see Maud’s face near me.

“The baby has a lot of problems,” I tell her. I’m ashamed: I want to tell people about my perfect baby, not this terrible mess I’ve created.

Maud looks worried, tells me she knows. She goes into the hall at some point.

* * *

I won’t remember the next period of time. Only the moment Dicken and Maud come into the room, their faces grim, eyes downcast. I know the news is horrendous. I am afraid of what Dicken will say, and I’m distressed for him, knowing he doesn’t want to have to tell me.

He kneels down by me. “Did he die?” I ask. He shakes his head. I envision the worst kind of handicap, a long life of disfiguration, surgeries, drugs, mental retardation, adult foster care, and on and on. I see an endless tunnel, an existence dark and meaningless and against everything we believe in. I see ruin. Human ruin, family ruin.

“The baby has some serious challenges,” he begins. He tells me the team suspects trisomy 13. I flash back to a piece I read on the Internet about trisomy 13, the list of problems, how I skipped over it without resting on the possibility because it was too dreadful. “These babies don’t live long,” Dicken says, breaking into choked sobs. I reach for him, reassuring him with my hands as best I can given my limited strength and mobility.

“We have a decision to make,” Dicken says, when he can speak again. He manages to tell me about the option of sending the baby to Portland for testing, then possible surgery; the poor odds. “They may not be able to stabilize him—they can’t get a breathing tube in his mouth because of the cleft palate. If he does have trisomy 13, which they will do a blood test for, they won’t operate because the chances of survival are so slim.”

I know right away we are not going to put our baby through all that.

“We have to let him go,” I hear myself say. Dicken nods, begins to sob again. I reach for him, and everything in me wants him to know there is nothing wrong. We are facing a terrible loss, but at the same time I am filled with a strange certainty that all is unfolding in some sort of natural perfection. Compared to the terror my mind has been putting me through, this eventuality is so simple, so clear. To me, that clarity is a gift, even though what we are dealing with is the most difficult news I’ve ever had to confront.

Something in me relaxes—the part of me that was clenched in the face of the unknown. Now that there is a definite outcome, an end in sight, I am flooded with relief. I hope that it happens quickly, that we get to the end once and for all. “How long will he last?” I ask.

“They don’t know. Could be minutes, could be days.”

When I see that Dicken has regained his composure, my relief vanishes, and I go cold with fear. It’s as if we are switching places, one gathering strength as the other wavers.

“I don’t want to see the baby,” I tell Dicken. I am scared of what he will look like and how that will affect me. I don’t believe I can love him. I want this loving husband and father to carry his son through life and death. Dicken is strong, he can do it. It’s better if I never see him.

“Take him and hold him until he dies,” I tell Dicken. I am worried that I’ll reject him. I don’t yet know the difference between a cleft palate and a cleft lip and imagine a deformed, grotesque-looking baby. I’m afraid that if I do see him and feel a connection, letting him die will be beyond my ability to endure. I just want the whole thing to go away. I think that if I don’t see him, I can forget the pregnancy and birth and go on as if none of it ever happened.

Dicken looks at me with a serious face. I tell myself that he will do whatever I ask, that he will stick to his birth philosophy of always honoring the mother’s requests, without question. “Honey,” he says very gently but firmly. When I see that he isn’t just going to turn around and do what I’ve asked, I steel myself to make him comply. “You’re his mother. He knows you. He needs you now. I think you should hold him.”

In that instant I know he is right, and I nod.

Dicken goes to see the doctors. I am overwhelmed and agitated. This has brought an end to the terror, but the sudden change in direction is making the world spin.

Mom comes in, still in her scrubs. She’s been with the baby ever since I was wheeled out of recovery. When I was eight months along, I dreamed I had a beautiful baby boy, and just after the birth he looked up at Mom and said, That my Nana, again? It makes me think now that he knew her, and I imagine he recognized her when she came to him during the hour after he was born, when she was the only family member with him. Knowing that she has been with him, touching him, talking to him, welcoming him, giving him her unconditional love, is a great solace. I’ll always be grateful to her for following her instinct to get to the hospital right away, talking her way into the operating room, and managing to get herself on the resuscitation team for that period of time just before they diagnosed him.

“He’s so adorable!” Mom tells me. “And he’s a real fighter. He keeps trying to pull off the oxygen mask. He looks just like Jabu. Oh, his chest, it’s so beautiful!”

This message and my mother’s softness and love melt me, and I feel a tiny surge of confidence. I can love this baby. Hope stirs in me. Then heartrending dread. A bittersweet burst of emotion. He’s cute, what a relief. But oh, what a waste.

* * *

A hush comes over the room as a nurse brings my newborn son to me. I reach out for him. The nurse places him in the crook of my left arm. I look at him, and time stops.

There is no fear, no horror, no sense that anything is wrong. I am in a state of complete bliss, marveling at the wonder of this being. Thoughts stop. I’m no longer shaking. I look into his eyes, and he sees me and gives me a look of recognition, almost a smile. He is swaddled in a white blanket and wearing a soft white cap on his head. My beautiful, beautiful son, my baby, my love. His mouth is perfect-looking, everything is, and he has stunning dark blue eyes. A little like Jasper, a little like Dicken. I would never guess from seeing his face that he has any physical problems. Yet in the instant I meet him I know I’d love him even if his face were deformed.

I’m amazed at him. My sister will tell me later that I speak to him with loving words, reminding her of how I spoke to Jasper when he was first placed in my arms.

“The doctor says you can try to nurse him.”

I position his face next to my nipple. He tries to mouth it, makes a distressed face and a small cry like a wounded baby bird. He seems to be struggling for breath. I feel desperate to help him in that moment, a searing stab of anguish I can’t contain. Then he turns his head away from my nipple and puts his tiny fist in his mouth instead. He seems to have soothed himself. He doesn’t show another sign of pain or distress for the rest of his life.

“We need to name him quickly, don’t you think?” I say to Dicken.

He nods.

“Theodore,” I say, the name coming out of my mouth without thought.

Dicken nods. “That’s his name.”

“Theodore Simon,” I say.

“Yes. Theodore Simon.”

Theodore came up during the pregnancy but was never high on the list. I know it means “gift from God.” Simon is Dicken’s father’s name, and Jasper’s middle name. Jasper has asked us if he and the baby can share middle names.

My stepfather Ralph arrives with Jasper and Kevin. Ralph hangs in the background, but the boys come over quickly, looking at their brother with wide eyes.

“Do you know he’s not well?” I ask Jasper. He nods gravely.

As Jasper stands near us, the baby stretches his arm out, as if he’s reaching for his brother. Jasper moves closer and strokes Theo’s hand. His eyes grow wide as he discovers the extra finger, a tiny appendage next to his pinky. At first he seems a little taken aback, and I wonder if he’s frightened.

“Look, Mom! He has six fingers.” He touches the baby’s hand with a look of awe and says, “It’s his lucky finger!”

Jasper and Kevin kiss the baby, stroke his face gently.

Then Theo closes his eyes and stops breathing for what seems like a long time. He begins to turn pale.

“I think this is it,” I tell Dicken.

Dicken comes over and touches Theo, beginning to sob.

“It’s okay to let go,” I tell the baby. “We’ll always love you.”

Theo suddenly takes a big breath and opens his eyes again.

* * *

Gabriella arrives, camera equipment in hand. We had asked her to film the home birth, so she had her gear ready to go. I introduce her to the baby and ask her to be his godmother. She smiles, tears falling down her face. A few minutes later, Tom, Grace, and Sam arrive. I’m happy Theo has made it long enough to meet his cousins. Tom hands Sam to Dicken, who holds him up to the bed so he can see the baby. Sam kisses me. Grace smiles at Theo, gently touches his face.

I ask Dicken if he wants to hold Theo, and he nods, then takes him from me, cradling him carefully in his large hands. They gaze at each other with a sense of awe and ease, like old friends meeting after a long, long time. It reminds me of watching Dicken hold Jasper for the first time, only Theo seems more awake than Jasper was. I ask Gabriella to film it. She gets out her camera.

When the baby comes back to me, I look at him and wonder how long he will be with us. I will stay awake as many hours and days as he’s here. I have no sense of physical limitations, no tiredness. I don’t know what time it is, whether it’s day or night, winter or summer, whether we are on earth or on the moon. Nothing matters but loving this baby.

I know that all I have to do is love him and let him go. That is crystal clear. Everything else falls away. Loving like this is the purest, most powerful experience I’ve ever had. Overwhelmingly beautiful. I have to love him but I can’t hold onto him. I can’t cling, can’t go into stories about what I would do if I ever lost him—I’ve already lost him. I can see the inevitable and relax into cherishing him while he is here. The intensity of this birth and death brings me into a presence I have never known. No fear, no doubt, no suffering. Maybe part of me is going through some of that, but my attention is elsewhere, on the pure love blasting through everything. The light is so bright that my personality, my physical self, and the drama of what is happening won’t show up on Gabriella’s film.

Theo closes his eyes, makes a fist, and stops breathing. I watch him get pale. I focus myself on him fully, telling him I love him and that it’s okay for him to go. I don’t grasp, don’t want it any other way. I am so caught up in the unfoldment, I am almost willing it to happen. I hear Dicken say, “Godspeed on your journey,” as he gently touches Theo’s forehead. The baby is quiet, doesn’t take another breath. A nurse comes in and listens to his heart with her small stethoscope. She says she can hear a heartbeat but it is faint. “I don’t think it will be long now.” A few minutes later she listens again and nods. “He’s gone.” She looks at her watch to note the time—5:14 a.m., almost five hours after his birth.

Dicken sobs. Grace wails. The room fills with raw expressions of grief. I hold onto Dicken, trying to comfort him with my limited physical mobility, trying not to tangle the tubes in my arm. His cries go straight through me: they are almost unbearable. At the same time, I am overcome with a feeling of peace. I hold Theo, touch his face, continue to bask in love for him.

* * *

I wait for the nurse to tell us what they will do with his body, expecting that soon we’ll have to turn it over for whatever they need to do. Someone, maybe me, maybe Dicken, asks the nurse about the protocol. I steel myself to have to say goodbye and hand him over. I know I won’t resist. There is nothing hard in me. I am completely soft, pounded into full surrender.

The nurse says, “You can keep him for as long as you like.” Relief floods me. I can hardly believe it. I gather the bundle of him and his blankets as close to me as I can, breathing in his baby smell, wishing I could press him through the boundary of my own skin and into my cells forever.

Dicken sobs and I hold him. I sob and he holds me. Again there seems to be a natural rhythm, one of us in despair, the other one there to support. We cling to each other after everyone has gone, looking at our baby son together.

At some point, all the ways I’ve resisted what was happening, all the rejection I’ve felt, it all fills me and I begin to shake. Then I am crying hysterically.

“What is it?” Dicken asks. “Are you in pain?”

I shake my head. “I have some terrible things to confess,” I say, when I can speak. I take a big breath. “I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want a baby with problems. I was happy when you told me he was going to die. Part of me was hoping he would.”

The horror of it fills me as I look at my beautiful baby and hold him and wish I could take back all the hurtful things I’d thought. The guilt is crushing. I sob so hard I can’t breathe.

“Of course you felt all that,” Dicken says, gathering me into his arms. “It was all so intense. But you loved him, you loved him so much, and he knew that.”

“But I was relieved when I heard he would die! What kind of a mother am I?”

“You just wanted to know it would all be over soon. You went through so much. And you were there for him when he needed you. That’s what counts, not the brief moments of fear and doubt.”

I cry even harder now, from the release, the relief, the comfort of being held in Dicken’s loving arms, and the sadness bound up in all I’ve been keeping in. I weep for a long time.

Overlaying all the feelings of heartbreak and pain and shock and amazement, there is a palpable state of grace we both marvel at. It is similar to the way we felt the night Jasper was born. An exhausted relief mingled with a joy so profound it’s indescribable. Yet the sadness is so intense, I wonder if I will actually survive it.

* * *

I cry on and off through the night. Much of the time tears just slide out continuously, and I get so used to them I hardly notice. It is not always painful, not always attached to sadness. It’s a gentle and continual release, like someone is washing my face. Sometimes a violent surge comes over me like a strange, uncontrollable force outside myself, and I have to let it take over. Then the sounds that come out of me are nothing I recognize. They are animal-like, emerging from deep within. At times I’m feel like I’m falling, and I desperately cling to Dicken. Neither of us sleeps.

Between bouts of tears, we rest in the silence together and watch the sky gradually grow light. It becomes a gorgeous sunny morning after a night of light snow, the first day the sun has truly come out in ages. It has been raining, snowing, flooding for weeks and weeks. I remember how a few days earlier, in honor of all the precipitation, we’d considered the name Noah, which I will later learn, like Theodore, means “gift from God.”

* * *

In the early morning, Dicken calls his mother, who is at a conference in Arizona. She knows nothing of what has happened, and is planning to fly to us later that day, expecting to be with us for the birth. When Dicken reaches her at her hotel, she is awake, getting packed and ready for her flight. Dicken tells her the news, breaking down between words. “Mum, I held him for a long time and we looked into each other’s eyes that whole time. He was so beautiful.”

Later, she will tell us that as soon as she heard, she noticed an enormous light filling the room she was in. She couldn’t get over it, and still describes the light as huge and undeniably real. When she saw that light, she says, she knew the baby was an astonishing being. She will also tell us that she’d been crying on and off for the past couple of days without knowing why. At the exact time of Theo’s death, she’d gone into the bathroom of her shared hotel room (not wanting to wake her roommate) and cried her eyes out. She wondered if it was some unresolved grief but couldn’t identify anything specific. “I just howled and howled,” she will tell us. “It was very odd.”

* * *

The nurse says they will need to take the baby for a short time to measure him and photograph his body for their records. They ask us if it’s okay to bathe him, and we say yes. I miss him dreadfully while he is gone and hold tightly to Dicken.

The nurses bring him back dressed in a shiny white outfit with lace trim and a tiny lavender flower. They tell us he weighs five pounds, fourteen ounces. They give us a pretty white box with a stuffed bear, a necklace set with a small ceramic heart that fits into a larger one, a birth certificate and a death certificate, both with Theo’s footprints in ink, and materials on grief and on trisomy 13, which they suggest we read later, when we feel stronger. They tell us there are Polaroid photographs of Theo’s unwrapped body in the box. One of the nurses has run home to borrow her husband’s digital camera so we can take our own pictures of Theo. Later, she will print them up for us at home and bring us copies.

* * *

Maud comes back early in the morning, her eyes red, her face puffy and tired-looking. She brings me a brush, and she and Grace help get the tangles out of my hair.

Visitors stream in and out all day, bringing flowers and cards. Almost all of them, especially the children, want to hold Theo. His body is cool but still soft. Several people comment that he looks just like a sleeping baby.

The phone in our room rings. Dicken answers it, listens, whispers for a moment, then puts his hand over the receiver and tells me it’s my brother, Ben. I nod and he hands me the phone.

At first all I can hear is Ben sobbing, then choking out, “I’m so sorry, Cinda.” More sobbing. Then, “When Cec called me, she was crying so hard she couldn’t tell me what happened. All she said was, It’s Cinda.” He breaks down again. “I thought it was you, that you had . . .” He cries some more, and I cry too. Then he composes himself and asks if they’re giving me any drugs.

“I think there’s a painkiller in my drip,” I tell him. “And they’re offering me something strong, morphine maybe, but I’m too numb to need anything.”

“Well, save some of the good stuff for me,” he says, and I find myself laughing.

* * *

Ralph visits. “Theo was so lucky,” he says. “He had the ideal life, held in his mother’s arms the whole time. What more could anyone ask for?”

Ralph sits by our bed and reads us the words of his guru, Paramahansa Yogananda: “Though the ordinary man looks upon death with dread and sadness, those who have gone before know it as a wondrous experience of peace and freedom.” This washes through me without starting any analysis or evaluation in my mind. I’ve read and heard Yogananda for years, and for the first time in my life, I know these words as truth, rather than just hearing the ideas and hoping they’re true.

Time seems to stop and expand into a huge white space. I have very little mental activity. It is like sitting in a vast nothingness. I can’t even begin to consider reading, listening to music, or thinking of anything past or future. For days this will be the case. I can only be with people, talking and listening, even laughing occasionally, or sit blankly, or cry. I have very little interest in food, and it takes severe hunger pains to remind me to eat.

I’ve found myself in a state that is weightless, as if I’ve dropped every ounce, surrendered everything I’ve been carrying, even things I didn’t realize had weight, like unarticulated worries, attention on others, memories, thoughts. Being in this nothingness, this all-ness, is effortless, peaceful. A paradox of emptiness and fullness. And now that I’m here, I see how much energy I’ve wasted in my life, worrying that I didn’t have this in me, that it would take more discipline and effort than I was capable of to see truth so purely. I woke up when I had to, when I knew Theo would die, and then everything in me became love.

I hope I don’t go back to sleep, but I know it’s okay if I do. When I need to, I will awake again. None of our life is truly wasted. We will always land here in the end.

* * *

Paul sits with us and says, “You’re both profoundly changed forever.” His wife, Patty, a former nurse-midwife, can’t get over what a beautiful baby Theo is. She says, “If you’d had an amnio, you’d never have had this incredible experience of change.”

Dr. Moreno comes in to check on me. She holds my hand and asks how I’m doing. Through choked tears, I tell her how grateful I am that she recommended the C-section, that she got our baby out in time for us to meet him and be with him for those irreplaceable hours. She nods solemnly, her eyes blinking open and shut with emphasis, making me wonder if she is uncomfortable.

Just then, Sam bursts into the room. “Tia! The nurses gave me a quacka!”

Dr. Moreno smiles and tells me, “My nieces and nephews call me Tia.” I wonder if she has her own children but don’t ask.

Jennifer, the pregnant family doctor, comes in and tells me how sorry she is that she reassured me before the surgery that the baby would be okay. “I’ve never delivered a trisomy baby,” she says.

I tell her I understand and that her words helped calm me down, even though they didn’t turn out to be true. I ask when she’s due. “Next week,” she says. I smile, feeling nothing but sweetness for this kind doctor and her soon-to-be-born baby.

Kathy, the anesthesiologist, comes in and can’t speak at first because she is crying. I show her Theo, introduce her to him. I thank her for being so warm, and tell her she made all the difference.

“You can have another one, right?” she asks, her voice thick with emotion.

Without thinking about it, I shake my head. Then I say, “Well, who knows. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

* * *

I cry my eyes out all that day but never lose touch with how graced I feel. Looking at Theo’s angelic, peaceful face makes me weep, mostly with a sense of awe and gratitude. I’m also aware of a new force pushing up from the depths of me. Gradually, I am starting to feel the longing for what I know I can never have back.

A friend arrives with cups of coffee from Dutch Brothers, and they smell good. My first thought is, Too bad I can’t have any, because I’m thinking I need to keep my breast milk pure for the baby. When I realize my error, I sob. I don’t want the coffee after all.

* * *

These two days in the hospital, I almost always burst into tears at the sight of anyone I haven’t seen yet. I cry on the phone to my father, my brother, friends. I cry when I see what we have been through reflected in their eyes, their voices. But I’m not just crying from sadness. I am moved by everyone, their love for us, their every gesture. It’s like I’m seeing them without any filters, and their beauty is astonishing.

* * *

Dicken’s mother Caroline arrives. I feel a strange sense of pride as I show her Theo and watch her tenderly take him into her arms. She looks at him, smiling and wiping tears from her face. Then she comments on the light in the room. “The angel of birth is here, and so is the angel of death. No wonder this place feels so heavenly.”

We discuss Theo’s features, noting the family traits he seems to have inherited. “He’s got the Edgecumb hook nose,” Caroline says. “A big nose for such a little face.” I remember that she said the same thing about Jasper when he was born, and again feel slightly defensive about my baby’s looks, even though I know that in Theo’s case the size of his nose will not shape his future. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. But it does. This is my baby and he is perfect.

* * *

Karen, who years ago lost her own baby boy to trisomy 18, leads a beautiful blessing ceremony that afternoon. Midwives, friends, nurses, and family crowd into the small room. All the family members dip flannel pieces into rose water and lavender oil and anoint Theo’s body.

Grace tries to sing “The Rabbit Song” and keeps bursting into tears. We wait each time and she finally gets the words out in her sweet voice:

 

Oh the racing of the moon and the rising of the sun

These flowers green and tall must go the way of all

And winter comes too soon . . .

Oh the sparrows in the sky and the dragons in the sea

In mad or merry weather we’ll take a rest together

Under the apple tree . . .

 

Later, Karen sits with us and tells us the story of her son Juniper, who was born with trisomy 18 and lived for a number of days. “What a blessing he was,” she says, eyes shining. I can’t help but note the strange fact that both Karen and Rhione, whose son Jared died three years before, have lost their third child, like me. What are the odds? Did everything line up this way so that our birth team could support us through this experience with the most powerful form of compassion?

* * *

Kevin looks at Theo and says, “It’s such a shame he didn’t stay around longer.” Jasper clings to Dicken.

Several members of the Threshold Choir come by. You are loved, they sing, and I sob. It feels very odd to be on the receiving side of the choir’s offerings.

The Megaritys, very close family friends, arrive at some point. Shannon, Dicken’s fishing buddy, is carrying a huge platter of halibut he’s cooked. His face is so intense that it touches me, makes me want to reassure him. Angie is wiping away tears. I show her Theo, and she smiles. She takes him and we gaze at him together. Shannon gently cradles Theo in his big arms, looking down at him. Their kids and Courtney’s are eager to hold Theo. I’m amazed at their lack of fear.

Throughout our days at the hospital, the handful of children coming in and out flit between crying, laughing, playing, holding Theo, asking the nurses for sweets, and testing various medical devices. Sometimes they fight over whose turn it is to hold Theo. Grace and Rosie agree that he smells like cookies and cream. I think it’s the lavender oil we used to anoint him during Karen’s ceremony.

* * *

Whenever I break down, Dicken rushes to hold me. I feel utterly dependent on him. When he leaves the room to talk to someone on his cell phone, I get agitated and panicky, and wheel my IV machine into the hall to find him.

Holding Theo is bittersweet. I love being able to hold him tight, to feel his comforting weight in my arms, to gaze at his features, which were a mystery for so long. He smells delicious. We dress him in the purple sweater Maud has been knitting for the last month. Some of the time I feel almost normal, as if I’m holding a live baby I’ve just given birth to, one who will wake up any moment and need to be nursed. But then reality grabs me, and knowing we will have to let him go, watching his lips begin to dry up—it all rips at my heart, and another wave of sobbing begins.

One of the nurses brings us a container of lip salve for Theo, and I put it on his cool, crackly lips. I repeat this every so often. I like being able to take care of him this way. It is one of the only tangible acts of mothering I will get to do.

I don’t notice anything about my body or the recovery from surgery. As the nurses come to check my vitals every few hours, look at my incision, ask about pain levels, put my feet in a strange pulsing machine to increase circulation at night, and so on, I keep thinking they’re making an unnecessary fuss. All of my attention is on Theo. The rest of life, even my physical survival, seems completely irrelevant. My pain level is always below five on a scale of one to ten. I get off the opiates the first day, then stop the ibuprofen. Everyone keeps telling me to “keep on top of the pain,” meaning I should take a painkiller before things get bad, but I prefer to get off all medication as soon as possible. I want to be pure and clearheaded through all of this. I feel crushed yet at the same time invincible.

And through it all, I am aware of a deep feeling of gratitude to the doctors and nurses for their training and knowledge, to modern medicine for how this birth has unfolded, and to each person for their sensitivity and kindness. It’s as if I am above everything, looking down at the thousandfold actions and paths that have led these people here, from their youthful aspirations to become medical professionals to the classes they had to take, to the years of training and licensing requirements, job placement and scheduling, all the way to the moment I checked into the birth center, and then through the surgery and its physical aftermath, all smooth and relatively painless. I am aware of medical progress over decades, research and practice and honing that have led to low-risk surgeries like mine. I know it is a miracle and a luxury that I don’t have to suffer physically, that my loved ones don’t have to see me in pain or worry about my survival. I know that in many parts of the world today this C-section wouldn’t have been possible, and that in other places right now and almost anywhere in relatively recent times, childbirth itself was and is a gamble; in another time or place, I could easily have contracted an infection and died.

Because of my good fortune—not only the modern expertise available to me but also the empathic skills, the presence of these openhearted medical people—we can forget the physical and pay full attention to Theo, to love, to the cataclysmic events of the heart.